Monthly Archives: June 2012

As John points out below, President Obama yesterday congratulated the “Miami Heats” for winning the NBA championship. He singled out James Lebron for particular praise (sorry, I made that part up as a composite). This isn’t the only evidence that Obama is a phony sports fan. Our president loves to talk about his devotion to the Chicago White Sox; he did it again at a fundraiser two days ago. But »

Last night was a relatively quiet one on the primary front. That’s mainly because it became clear a month ago or more that Sen. Orrin Hatch would cruise to victory over insurgent candidate Dan Liljenquist. Nothing, then, for the MSM to fixate on here. Hatch did indeed cruise, besting Liljenquist by almost exactly a 2-1 ratio. I’m happy that Hatch will be returning to the Senate. He has been a »

If you haven’t already seen it, the “Miami Heats” video is here. I haven’t seen an embeddable version yet, but will add it when it goes up on YouTube. And to think that basketball was the one thing I assumed Barack Obama knew something about! »

Mark your calendar: Tomorrow (Thursday), I’ll be guest-hosting again on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show on the Salem network from 6 – 9 am eastern time. If you don’t have a station in your area, you can listen at the website, www.billbennett.com–look for the button up near the top that says “Listen.” Of course, the show will end exactly an hour before the Supreme Court issues its ruling »

John Updike’s collections of stories about his fictional alter ego Henry Bech are my favorites among Updike’s body of work. When Bech wins the Nobel Prize for Literature in the story “Bech and the Bounty of Sweden,” Updike posits the headline reporting the news in the New York Daily News: “BECH? WHODAT???” The thought was at the same time self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. Updike was foremost among those who deserved the »

One of the marvels of Washington is that there is still one institution that doesn’t leak: the Supreme Court. No one in the media has remarked that although the Obamacare case was argued three months ago, and the vote of the justices to decide the winner a few days later, the decision has not leaked out. Undoubtedly the media and many others have tried to find out. It is something »

Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill was a big Obama booster in 2008. She endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton in January 2008. Remember? Even I do, and my memory has been slipping for 20 years. Once Obama won, McCaskill served faithfully as a Democratic lapdog. She voted for the stimulus. She voted for Obamacare. Remember? Even I do, and my memory has been slipping for 20 years. Or did I say »

It was either Edward Banfield or James Q. Wilson—I forget which, but it doesn’t matter since they were both giants of political science who thought in similar ways—who once told another political scientist: “Stop trying to predict the future; you can’t even predict the past!” This lapidary epigram came to mind recently when all the usual people (meaning liberals and the media) got their knickers in a twist when those »

The last quarterfinal of Euro 2012 – the 28th match of the tournament – finally produced the inevitable goalless draw. To no one’s surprise, England and Italy provided it. Justice was served in the penalty kick shoot-out when the Italians, who dominated almost the entire contest, prevailed 4-2. By making the quarterfinals, England did as well as could have been expected under the circumstances. But their inability to mount sustained »

Hoping to improve his chances for reelection, President Obama recently has pandered to Hispanic voters in the following ways: First, in violation of his constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” Obama has announced that the U.S. government will refuse to enforce the immigration laws as they apply to an entire, massive class of illegal aliens (those who were brought here as children by their parents). »

The novelist C. J. Box (Chuck, to his friends) emailed me tonight to say that he and his wife were finishing up a long hike in Yellowstone National Park when they came across this sign: Chuck says: “I thought: ‘I’d take that trail!’” If you are not familiar with C. J. Box’s work, you should check it out. His web site is here. He is best known for the Joe »

Today’s Washington Post contains a front page story about Mia Love, the Republican candidate for Congress in Utah’s Fourth Congressional District. Love, age 36, is the mayor of Saratoga Springs, a rapidly growing Utah town of about 18,000. She is also Black, Mormon, and quite conservative. If elected, she will become the first Black female Republican member of Congress. Love entered politics when she heard talk about taking the words »

It was reported tonight that last-minute negotiations between House staff and Eric Holder’s Department of Justice have broken down, which means that the House will proceed with a vote that should make Holder the first Attorney General to be held in contempt of Congress. CBS, like other news outlets, begins by misrepresenting the Fast and Furious program: The Department of Justice and House Republicans have been at a stalemate regarding »

That’s the question that is raised by this chart, plotting federal welfare spending against the poverty rate. When President Johnson announced the War on Poverty, he said his intention was to abolish poverty in America. That hasn’t happened, of course. And I doubt that any liberal today would proclaim such a goal. Today, welfare spending is mainly a way to funnel dollars into the pockets of Democratic Party constituencies; therefore, »

President Obama has decided to make the claim that Mitt Romney “outsourced” jobs as head of Bain Capital a major theme of his reelection campaign. Today in Waterloo, Iowa, Joe Biden repeated the “outsourcing” mantra. I’m not sure that either Obama or Biden has any clear idea what outsourcing means, and their application of the charge to Romney’s business career is dubious at best. But what makes this hilarious, rather »

Paul wrote here that he doesn’t buy the theory, advanced by Bill Whittle and others, that the real purpose of the Fast and Furious program was to lend support to the assertion that the weapons used by drug gangs in Mexico come overwhelmingly when gun shops in the American Southwest, so as to advance the political cause of gun control in the U.S. Paul’s arguments were cogent as always, but »

The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration believes Egypt’s newly elected president Mohammed Morsi – he of the Muslim Brotherhood – could become a U.S. ally. It describes the administration as cautiously upbeat about Morsi. He thus joins a growing list of hostile leaders with whom Obama believes (or believed) he can successfully work. The list includes Assad in Syria, Ahmadinejad in Iran, Putin in Russia, and the folks »